Loss of Wings
by Arctic Husky
Summary: Post-FE10, TormodxVika one-shot. Vika never knew that a relationship with a beorc would mean sacrificing everything that made her a laguz...


I just wanted to have a part in the love for Vika in a few recent fanfics... Okay, that's not true; I got the idea for this story before other people starting showing some appreciation for Vika, ha ha. I honestly don't know where my opinion on this pairing even stands; I just wanted an excuse to write about the consequences of a laguz/beorc relationship. I think that writing is has given Tormod/Vika a special place for me.

Spoilers: If you don't understand what "the consequences of a laguz/beorc relationship" are.

Disclaimer: I do not own Fire Emblem or anything in it.

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_Loss of Wings_

A mélange of a sigh and a whine conveyed Vika's disapproval at morning's arrival. Even as she kept her eyes tightly shut in an attempt to ignore it, the voices from the hallway outside and the sunshine prying through her eyelids ensured that she did not fall back asleep. Grudgingly opening her eyes, Vika could see through her bleary morning-vision that her bedmate was likely also awake, trying to make himself oblivious to morning by burying his face into his pillow and letting a hand fall languidly over one of his ears.

Her initial urge was to let a finger idly trail over his bare back to startle him awake, but her thought was swiftly sidetracked by memories of the prior night. She'd touched his back then, too, through a layer of sweat and with much more vigour. A smile pulled on her lips and she tried to contain it, her cheeks subtly aching with suppression. She felt like laughing, remembering his confident murmur of, "Don't call me 'Boss', okay? It'd be weird" and how he had been the one gasping and moaning at what was a new experience to him. It was, she thought, new to her as well to a certain degree—in the past she never would have imagined being so close to a beorc.

She moved to nestle a palm underneath her head and felt her skin brush against the fabric of her shirt. She thought of how they had tiredly gathered up the minimum amount of clothing that they needed to look decent and tossed it on in case a Begnion messenger came in with urgent news at any point. The ribbon that usually kept her shirt securely in place was left undone and her shorts fell low on her hips as her belt still waited on the floor. He had had it so much easier, just pulling his shorts on and falling back onto the bed, asleep within minutes. Before she huddled near to him and closed her eyes for the night, Vika made a mental note to tease him for that.

Succumbing to her smile, she also gave into her impulse to awaken Tormod with a delicate touch of his back. As anticipated, he shot up into a sitting position and looked around in half-conscious confusion. A low snicker sounded from Vika's throat, drawing his attention to her. She first looked up at him with amusement, but her expression faded to concern when he continued to stare at her without a hint of a smile on his face. "...Tormod?"

"Something's wrong..."

Before Vika could inquire what he meant, he reached down and threaded his fingers through her hair; once again, his face was full of apprehension. She felt him trace the contour of her ear smoothly, as though it was round. With a sharp gasp, Vika brought her own hand to her ear and followed the same path that Tormod had with alarm; her ears were like those of a beorc. "Why—?"

"That isn't all." His words were spoken as though he was in a daze. He gently took hold of the end of her hair and drew it slightly in his direction, just enough to let the raven see it; she saw tresses of a deep auburn, slightly lighter and a completely different shade from the somewhat ashen black hair that she had always had.

Panic abruptly seized her, first like a disagreeable blow to the stomach and then rushing to her heart and thrashing within her chest. Without any words, she rapidly sat up only to find herself battling a weight on her back. "M-My wings," she stammered, trying to shake them, flap them, _move_ them in any way. It was as though they were deadweight, anything but the lightness that feathers and hollow bones were meant to be.

Tormod pulled her into an embrace. She let her head slump onto his shoulder at a total loss of what to do. His hands moved up along her back, she felt, but when they reached the spot at the base of her wings that would normally cause her to let out restrained giggles when touched, she could not sense a thing. She knew that he was looking over her to her back in search of an explanation, and the way that he only seemed to take in breaths when he absolutely needed to heightened her anxiety. "Does this hurt?" he asked, his voice almost cracking in spite of his blatant effort to keep an even tone.

"I can't feel anything."

"It's like they're gone..." he mumbled in a soft voice that Vika was not meant to hear, but she did. Her wings—gone? She lifted her head slightly, just enough to look down at the bed sheets and find them littered with charcoal feathers. Against her consciousness, her breathing quickened with the pace of her heartbeats. "Hey, hey, stay calm," Tormod assured as he briefly abandoned analyzing her wings to give her proper hug, lowering his arms below her wings and squeezing her in a comforting way; she hardly processed the action.

He pulled away and moved to sit behind Vika. His hand swept across her back as though clearing off remnants. "What th..." Tormod dropped his question and hurried off of the bed and across the room to where their supplies were kept. Her eyes followed him lethargically, absently noting that his hand was suddenly a dark red. He returned to the spot behind her quickly with a roll of bandages in his possession. "Arms up," he ordered urgently and she complied. As he lifted her shirt over her head, something in her mind considered whether things would have been different had she resisted him doing just that the night before.

As much as she tried to focus her thoughts on the details of the wall ahead of her, Vika could not ignore the reality of the bandages being slipped around her torso time after time. When she felt the fabric tighten as Tormod knotted it at her side, she impassively wondered how many rounds it had made, how much blood there was to stop, why she was numb to something that should have been painful.

The distance that she had had from her emotions suddenly closed and the weight of questions lifted, leaving her head light with nothing but confusion and her throat heavy with sobs. "T-Tormod," she whispered shakily. The hoarseness of her voice made her gasp, ashamed at how lost she was and also shocked at the despair that she had failed to notice in her blank mind.

Tormod was sitting in front of her in an instant, already sympathetic eyes looking even more wretched when he saw her shallow breathing, struggling to keep herself from letting out a lengthy cry. "Vika, I..." he stammered, quickly forgetting his sentence in favour of drawing her close to him, arms tight around her and forehead pressed to hers. She kept her eyes open, still in a daze, and saw his kept closed and his body quavering with the snivels that she was repressing. His voice hardly audible, he said, "I'm so sorry... I didn't know..."

_I didn't know either._  
_I've never heard anyone talk about something like this._  
_I wish I'd have known. I would have..._  
_I don't know. I—I want to be with you, but..._

Vika stayed silent, her arms limp at her sides and her head still lazily against Tormod's. If she opened her mouth again, she wasn't sure that she could keep the wails inside, and in all of the time that they had known each other, crying was one thing that he had never seen her do.

His eyelids suddenly lifted and his gaze was so much more resolute than before. "I'm going to stay here with you," he told her, although he sounded as though he had just come to the conclusion himself. "I don't know why you should be punished and nothing should happen to me. I mean," he chuckled weakly, "staying with you is far from a punishment, but... I don't want to leave you alone to suffer, okay? U-Unless you want me to. You must be ticked off for this..."

She felt his grip begin to loosen, faltering under his own uncertainty, and without a thought she lifted her arms and squeezed him in as tight a hug as she could muster. "No." She knew that the tears gathering at the back of her eyes were beginning to seep out, so she ducked her head below his chin and said, "Stay." Vika pressed her lips together firmly, knowing that she would start bawling if she parted them. At least she could keep him from seeing her tears.

"Then I'll be here," he whispered. His fingers traced her spine and she was relieved that it felt soothing, even when he touched the spot between where her wings should have been. Terrified as she was—without wings but with raven blood in her veins, neither laguz nor beorc—the fact that he still held her and promised to stay made her feel as though she was Vika and nothing else.

The unsettling thought of what exactly Vika was loitered inside of her, but for the time being, holed up in the room with only one person who didn't care, she could let that thought subside.

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Ah, the results of writing a fanfic when you really should have been writing something academic... how I love them. Feedback is always adored, especially when testing the waters of a new pairing.


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